Sunday, August 28, 2016

During my early morning walk I found five Black Lives Matter yard signs. On the plus side I also saw one yard sign in support of the police. Nevertheless support for the anti-human thugs is strong in North East Minneapolis.

Saturday, August 20, 2016

On a Sunday afternoon Evelyn brought Vicky to the Uptown Theater on the corner of Lagoon and Hennepin south of the downtown area of Minneapolis. It had been briefly run as a porno house before being purchased by Landmark Theaters and brought into service as a revival theater. This weekend the Uptown was showing a Monty Python double feature. And Now For Something Completely Different along with Monty Python And The Holy Grail.

Of course in order to bring Vicky along he had to briefly explain both films to her parents.

“Well the first is basically a recreation of several of the original television sketches in the standard cinematic format. And the second film is a retelling of King Arthur’s quest for the Holy Grail.”

Fortunately Evelyn didn’t have to explain how the shortfall in the production budget led to adoption of a major plot device or how an annoying critter had to be dealt with by a sacred artifact. Although it would have been nice if there were actually a Book Of Armaments in the New Testament.

Except for the passages about anchovies, of course.

Evelyn met Vicky at her home after Sunday Mass and took the bus down to the theater. After change of bus downtown they arrived before opening time and were at the head of the line of other local Monty Python fans. At roughly ten minutes before opening time a woman with long grey hair and wearing glasses with a clipboard walked up to the head of the line. To Evelyn she looked like John Lennon in drag and something about her just said that she was a closet communist.

And then he looked at the woman again.

Oh shit. He thought.

Stone recognized the woman.

On the second day of the war the Army Reserve company Stone was assigned to had mobilized at Fort Snelling. They were part of the 205th Infantry Brigade and assigned to the defense of Alaska from the Soviets. But now the 205th would be sent to Western Canada to fight the Soviet Airborne and Naval Infantry units that landed there. The original plan was for the unit to be flown to Alaska but with most of the airlift capacity destroyed on Day One the brigade would be transported by rail from the Amtrak station in Saint Paul. A mob of peace activists were blocking the entrance of the station.

And the woman was leading the mob.

Instead of beating the woman to a bloody pulp and granting the status of martyr he decided to do something worse.

Far worse.

He would mock her.

The woman launched into her impressive spiel about the evils of the American nuclear arsenal and the the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles which were presently deployed in North Dakota when Stone rudely interrupted her in his best impression of John Cleese.

“Madame, both my date and myself are too young to commit treason, and in case you haven’t noticed all of us here are waiting to see a Monty Python film.”

And with his right hand he gestured towards the other people waiting in line.

“And you didn’t actually believe we would take your sacred mission and delusion of importance seriously, did you?”

The woman was about to respond when Stone spoke again.

“And there’s also a reason those nice folks in the Kremlin call people like you a bunch of useful idiots, but then Soviet Communists never gave an actual damn about the emotional state of your lot. Seriously, you should take your silly petition and shove off.”

As the woman stormed away in anger Vicky spoke.

“That wasn’t nice.”

“It wasn’t meant to be nice.” He replied. “Beating her to a bloody pulp is clearly not an option, so what else can I do?”

“Okay.”

After the screening Evelyn and Vicky had a meal at the McDonald’s across Hennepin Avenue from the theater.

She had a question.

“So what’s with the coconuts?”

Evelyn answered.

“They didn’t have the funds to rent horses for the actors, so they used an old technique for simulating the sound of horses on the radio. And I may be wrong, but Graham Chapman also had a serious drinking problem at the time, which may explain his difficulty with counting up to five.”

“Three.”

“Oh right,” he said, “three.”

It was while waiting for the bus to go home that the peace activist walked up to them. She was still visibly angry at being humiliated and started to go off on him.

Stone responded as a drill sergeant.

“Madame, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has murdered no less than fifty million people since they seized power. And there is no excuse for supporting them, even in an indirect manner. As long as you support the Enemies of Mankind, then you will be identified as and dealt with as such and very likely this will be with a single round to the head.”

As the peace activists were blocking the entrance of the Amtrak station Stone had stepped away from his fellow combat riflemen and chambered a round in his weapon. He took careful aim and place the round between the lenses of her glasses.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Hot dish was a relatively quick and economical form of Minnesota cuisine using simple components such as ground beef, macaroni and cheese mix, and a can of condensed tomato soup. There were some people who put an elaborate effort into making hot dish but that missed the point. It was supposed to be a cheap and easy meal to make.

Monday, August 15, 2016

Before a doctor's appointment today I checked out the Smash Burger location at the Southdale Mall. Frankly I'm disappointed. Although the burger was made with Angus beef I could barely taste the distinct flavor of it and the fries were cut way too thin.

Seriously, if I still had a functioning car I would rather go down to Fuddruckers.

Sunday, August 14, 2016

I don’t know if I’m going to use this yet but here’s an excerpt from Star Of The North by E.A. Stone.

There was no shortage of idiots on our side during the war. One fellow actually wanted to ban sliced bread. He was actually serious about this. His excuse was that it would prevent wear on the production machinery. It didn’t matter to him that without slicing to a regular thickness there would be a waste of bread. A millimeter here or there and soon you would have a full loaf of bread. Do this with millions of loaves and this would be a real problem. Every bakery still in operation ignored the order but this idiot wouldn’t shut up and he was soon assigned to mine clearing duty.

Mine clearing? No, I’m not kidding.

The primary method of clearing mines during the war was to crawl out and poke the ground ahead of you with a wooden stick. When you found a mine you would mark the spot then go around and continue the search. In contrast the Soviet method of clearing mines was to take prisoners from the gulag, usually Mexicans or other Central Americans who got on the wrong side of a commissar, and march them out across the minefield at gunpoint to deliberately detonate the mines. A lot of the victims who survived the procedure were enthusiastic recruits for our side. They mostly wanted to go home and they didn’t care how many Reds they had to kill to get there.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

I'm trying to get past the writers block problem so I wrote an addition to the fifth chapter of the current project.

On arrival at the Senate committee room Stone stood out from everyone else. Along with his apparent state of youth Stone also wore another second hand suit that dated from a decade ago as he had no use for the polyester fabrics, wide lapels, and other stylistic flourishes of male fashion in the mid-seventies.

Prior to today’s session Stone had a conversation with Doctor Curtis.

“So what else are you working on?”

Stone thought for a moment and then answered.

“Well. My current project is titled Exodus, it’s about the passage of a neutron star through the Solar System and the human response to it.”

“Will it hit anything?”

“Does it have to?” Stone replied.

Curtis thought for a moment.

No, it didn’t, the gravitational effects of the passage would be more than sufficient to cause an extinction event on Earth.

Stone continued.

“I also did a rough outline for two more novels set in the same continuity as Don’t’ Give Up The Sheep and A Clear Morning. The first will be titled Star Of The North, which will be an account of the Final War from the viewpoint of a combat rifleman from Minnesota.”

In fact it would be his own autobiography with a change of some character names.

“The second is titled Return To Tranquility.”

“So after the war your people are going back to the Moon?”

“Yes.”

He was cheating on this one as well. This novel would be an account of the actual history of the new space program.

Curtis asked another question.

“So you’re using the Two Stage To Orbit system for your revived space program?”

“No.” Stone replied. “I’m cheating.”

“Really?” Said Curtis. “How?”

“Well initially I’m using a system called Boosted Single Stage To Orbit.”

“BSTTO?”

“Yes.” Stone replied. “It’s basically Korolev’s solution to building a first generation ICBM.”

Stone was referring to the R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile which was later adapted to launch satellites and manned spacecraft.

”Korolev?” Said Curtis.

“Sergei Korolev, the head Soviet rocket scientist at the time.”

“I’ve never heard of him.”

Stone was surprised but replied.

“I thought I read the name somewhere.”

You did after the war. He thought.

You idiot.

Stone continued.

“So the orbiter runs on LOX-LH2 solely on internal tankage, but uses external boosters to provide thrust in the initial stage of the flight. The boosters are recoverable, and while the unmanned dry cargo and tanker versions of the orbiter can use solid propellants, there is a clear reluctance after the accident in A Clear Morning to use them on the manned orbiter.”

Stone used the technical shorthand terms for liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, the primary propellants of the Space Shuttle system.

Curtis nodded.

“Yes.”

Stone continued.

“So for the manned orbiter we take a proven system like the Redstone, take the unused mass of the warhead and the guidance platform and use it for structural reinforcement, the recovery system, and additional propellant.”

Redstone was the first generation theater ballistic missile system deployed by the United States Army. And it would eventually replaced by the initial version of the solid fuel Pershing 1 and Pershing 1A missiles.

“So what we have is a system that is reliable, recoverable, and most importantly, reusable.”

Curtis nodded again.

“Okay.” He said. “Can you send a copy of Return To Tranquility? The technical parts?”

“Sure,” Stone replied, “no problem.”

With this it was time to testify.

Although Senator March had recognized Stone from their previous encounter and had objected to his testimony before it began the chairman asked him to proceed.

Monday, August 01, 2016

Ritual mass murder, as was practiced in Mexico before the arrival of the Europeans, or the systematic enforcement of error regardless of the death toll as practiced in the last century, is the expression of temporal state power. Given this it is no surprise that Barrack Obama has consistently followed the path of error and his appointed successor Hillary Clinton is promising even greater errors to come.